API == Folders

Anybody know how to:

1. List folders in the feature tree?
2. Determine whether a feature is in or out of a particular folder?
3. Move a feature into or out of a particular folder.

It seems like the API overlooks this kind of stuff.

 

swTnFeatureFolder _T("FtrFolder")

swTnSurfaceBodyFolder _T("SurfaceBodyFolder")
swTnSolidBodyFolder _T("SolidBodyFolder")

im sure the items in the folder are child of the folder

retval = Feature.GetChildren ( )

 

swTnFeatureFolder _T("FtrFolder")

The features inside a folder are not children of the folder feature.
Instead, for each feature there are two "feature folder" features. You can
easily see the how the folders work if you traverse the features by using
Feature::GetNextFeature. For example, if there is a folder named "Folder1"
in the feature manager tree, there is two folder features named
"Folder1__StartTag__" and "Folder1__EndTag", and the features "inside" the
folder are beetween these features.

To see whether a feature is in a folder, you have to traverse forward the
feature tree until you find a "FtrFolder" feature. If it's name contains
"__EndTag"__" the feature is inside a folder. The following function can be
used to get the name of the folder in which a particular feature is. The
function returns an empty string if the feature was not in a folder.

Hope this helps!

Function GetFolderName(ByVal objFeature As SldWorks.Feature) As String
'Loop forward in the feature tree until a folder feature is found
While Not objFeature Is Nothing
If objFeature.GetTypeName = "FtrFolder" Then
'A folder feature was found, see if it is an "end tag" folder
If InStr(1, objFeature.Name, "EndTag") Then
'Split the folder name from first "_" character
GetFolderName = Left(objFeature.Name, InStr(1,
objFeature.Name, "_") - 1)
Exit Function
Else
'If the folder was not an "end tag", it must be a "start
tag" and therefore the feature is not in a folder
Exit Function
End If
End If
'The feature was not a folder feature, so get the next one
Set objFeature = objFeature.GetNextFeature
Wend
'If we get this far, there was no folder features after this feature
End Function

 

"Sean Phillips"

wrong! ;-)
if you check the Parent/Child of a feature in a folder, the folder isn't
listed in the Parents, and the folder has no Parent/Child.

Run this small macro to see how it is done :

Sub recurse(ByVal f As SldWorks.Feature, i As Integer)
Debug.Print Space(i); f.GetTypeName; "/"; f.Name
Set f = f.GetFirstSubFeature
While Not f Is Nothing
Call recurse(f, i + 2)
Set f = f.GetNextSubFeature
Wend
End Sub

Sub main()
Set swApp = Application.SldWorks
Set Part = swApp.ActiveDoc
Set f = Part.FirstFeature
While Not f Is Nothing
Call recurse(f, 0)
Set f = f.GetNextFeature
Wend
End Sub

you'll get something like this :

DetailCabinet/Annotations
CommentsFolder/Comments
DocsFolder/Design Binder
MaterialFolder/Material <not specified>
EnvFolder/Lighting
AmbientLight/Ambient
DirectionLight/Directional1
DirectionLight/Directional2
SurfaceBodyFolder/Surface Bodies
SolidBodyFolder/Solid Bodies
RefPlane/Front Plane
RefPlane/Top Plane
RefPlane/Right Plane
OriginProfileFeature/Origin
ProfileFeature/Sketch1
FtrFolder/Folder1
Extrusion/Extrude1
ProfileFeature/Sketch1
FtrFolder/Folder1___EndTag___

you'll notice:
1) surfaces and bodies listed in Surface/Body "Folders" are not really
"features"
2) lights are, and they are actually subfeatures of the
"EnvFolder/Lightning" feature
3) sketches are called "ProfileFeature" and are listed once at the main
level and once as subfeatures of the features based on them...
4) features folders are implemented by 2 "FtrFolder" features with matching
names delimiting the list of features they contain ...
5) if may happen (as above) that a sketch listed in the folder in UI is
actually out of the folder in the features list...

So to know if a feature is in a folder, you should scan the features and
check if you find the feature between some FtrFolder x /FtrFolder
x___EndTag___ pair of features.

I'm still trying to guess the design intent behind this somewhat incoherent
handling of features. It seems that for some reason SW doesn't use a real
tree of features but is stuck to a single level of subfeatures...

 

Hey Heikko, don't you have better things to do on Sundays than answering the
same posts as me ?
;-)

 

Hey guys, I don't mind at all.

A couple interesting side notes.

I ran into this problem because I wanted to write a small macro to move
enmasse a group of features into or out of a folder. In my particular
practice I roll back to just after the last feature in a folder, create
more features based on the features in the folder and want to keep them all
together. Horizontal modeling I think this is called.

I asked SW about this problem and they were not aware of the fact that
folder tags can be enumerated. It isn't in the documentation and there are
no specific API calls regarding manipulating folder contents. Thanks for
all the effort (in VB). I appreciate the C stuff, but can't really use it
since I am limited to VBA right now.

I will check to see if I can move the folder tag after my list of features
there by encompassing the features in between. That would be easier and
computationaly cheaper than moving the features up past the tag.

If the folder feature end tag can be moved I wonder if folders in folders
are possible?

 

Heh, it's the famous "Get a Life"-syndrome (tm) ;-)

Btw, I don't mind about misspelling my name, but just for curiosity -
"heikko" happens to be Finnish and means "weak". :-D

I have wondered this as well. Maybe the reason could be the fact, that you
can easily make a mess of the folder tags, eg...

Folder1__StartTag__
....features...
Folder2__StartTag__
...more features...
Folder1__EndTag__
...Even more features....
Folder2__EndTag__

The UI and API calls should prevent this kind of problems.

-h-